My course starts with assumptions that define the first principles of chemistry. This I call the assumptive base of chemistry. It is the layer that comes before observation, before measurement, before phase or property. It is what you have to take as given before anything else can be done.
The base is small. Five statements, called the Five Foundational Assumptions, do most of the work. Reality is real. The world is composed of materials. Phenomena are interactions. No material disappears. The total material is constant. From these five, almost everything else follows.
The word "assumption" sometimes gets read as a weakness, as though we were admitting we hadn't really established anything. That reading is wrong. An assumption is a thing taken to be true but not proven, and the fundamental things are precisely the things we cannot prove without using them in the proof. Naming an assumption does not weaken what follows from it. Science is not absolute and unquestionable; it is based on some of the same assumptions made by theologians in their quest for knowledge. The honest move is to say so, and then to keep going.
Question
Why begin a course in chemistry with assumptions rather than with observations?
Reveal Merrill's answer →Hide answer
Because observation does not start from nothing. Before we can describe what we see, we have to take a small set of statements as given. That there is a world. That stuff and knowledge of stuff are two different things. That what we observe today will behave the same way tomorrow. Naming these as assumptions does not weaken what follows from them. It is the honest move.